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Sean McGrath wrote:
> I've just come across this quote which I really like:
>
> "Categories such as number, gender, case, time, mode, voice, aspect and a host
> of others...are not so much discovered in experience as imposed upon it".
> - E Sapir
> Conceptual Models in Primitive Languages
> Science (1931)
Well, yes, but imposed by what? The quote above exhibits the opinion of its
time, formed in reaction to the prescriptive grammatical conclusions of the
Victorian era. It is however, an opinion unaware of the discovery in the 1920's
of the true nature of poetic formulae and, by later extension, of the
determinant role of patterns of language on everyday instances of expression.
Grammatical choices such as those categories above are regularly imposed upon an
utterance by the idiom to which the speaker, usually unconsciously, conforms.
What we discover in experience, then, is not a selection of each grammatical
variant uniquely chosen for the occasion, but the identification by pattern of
an idiom, perhaps uniquely nuanced and in any case colored by the specific
circumstances of its use. The grammatical choices are made as a whole, or nearly
so, and are imposed by a pattern from the speaker's store of idiom. Choices
among such idioms, rather than in each category of grammatical possibility, are
the poetic tools which the speaker actually employs.
Respectfully,
Walter Perry
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